I think, you know, mountain biking isn't necessarily the cheapest sport to get into.

As a beginner, like you don't need the most expensive and craziest gear.

Like, you just need to figure out if you like it or not and get out there and ride your bike.

[upbeat show open music] [adventure music] All right, ladies!

I can't believe the season is here.

It's our 11th year, ladies, which is awesome.

[cheering] [adventure music fades] So, the Betties were first organized in 2014 by two local ladies.

Penny Schwyn and Jaime Rees.

The two kind of combined and decided to, you know, offer the community something they didn't have, which was to help get more women out on mountain biking, And so fast forward to, like, 2017, you know, life happens.

So, Penny and Jaime kind of had to step back a little bit.

And just knowing how important it was to me and the other women in the community, I kind of stepped up to help, keep the rides going.

And so from that point, like, I just kind of ran with it.

And so I've been doing group rides since about 2017.

[music] So the really quick, raise your hand if this is your first Betties ride.

Look at all these hands.

Woo!

I think you'll find that we're a pretty rad group pf ladies that like to support each other.

So, welcome!

[techy music] With the Biking Betties we are focused on singletrack trail, which basically is just, you know, a narrow piece of dirt, that depending on where the area is, can be really flowy and smooth with some jumps.

Or it can be really rough with rocks and roots.

So you know, it can be really overwhelming for a beginner to just get like flooded with all this terminology and you don't know.

You know, I can speak from experience coming to these group rides where you don't know anybody and you're intimidated and you think, I'm not going to stack up, my gear is not going to be good.

I don't know if I'm fast enough on the uphill, fast enough on the downhill.

And really, the first thing I like to do is just squash all that stuff with everybody.

[techy music] Saltese and Riverside are kind of our two, like beginner-ish rides that we like to recommend.

With that said, there's still going to be some climbing, but we're going to take lots of breaks.

It's going to be casual, social paced.

Cindy, raise your hand.

That's Cindy.

Cindy is our sweeper.

Our Betties rides are No Drop.

What is No Drop mean?

We're all making it to the top.

Do not stress if you're not the fastest rider.

We do not care.

We're here to hype each other up.

So.

Take breaks.

It's okay, if you've got to walk stuff, walk stuff.

The goal is to all get there and have fun at the end.

All righty.

Are we ready to party?

[crowd cheers] Sweet!

[techy music] I don't know when I learned how to ride my bike, but there was lots of tears involved, and I was probably a teenager, honestly.

And I really didn't ever ride my bike consistently.

I picked it up maybe a year before I join the Biking Betties.

but I was so uncoordinated on the bike.

I had no experience.

I didn't know what any part on the bike was called.

It just was a bike that had wheels and it moved.

and I came out to the Biking Betties with that very limited knowledge and limited experience and I just had a sense of like what I was willing to do on the trail and being able to tailor, the group ride experience to that.

And I think that's all it really takes.

You just need yourself and a bike and, some excitement to be out there with the with the other women.

No coordination necessary.

[laughs] We started doing a few years back, um, dig days or trail maintenance within the community And, that really progressed, into, Hey, we have done these projects that are kind of like these reroutes or maybe in areas that don't get a lot of traffic.

And, you know, as a Betties collective, we were like, hey, like, we, we want to do a trail that's us.

We want to do something for the community.

So working with Evergreen [East], we decided that we were going to do a, um, beginner jump trail.

[Cole] One.

Two.

Five.

[laughter] We are over at Beacon Hill at Camp Sekani.

Uh, today's March 8th.

It is our first dig day.

It's going to be a green jump trail.

So the idea of having a green jump trail, you'll have these big tabletop trails that have a flat landing on the top.

So you can go and jump at any speed and have the safety of flat to land on, and not worry about not landing correctly and getting hurt.

So, you can see a good example over here on this blue jump trail.

You can see a tabletop going into a corner that's more of an advanced move.

The idea with a green jump trail is theres really good lines of sight.

So people can focus on jumping.

[techy music] It will be the first women's only built trail, I believe, in our, like, greater area.

Um, so it's really important to us that we are able to show up and show the community what we have to bring to the trail building community, not just the mountain bike community.

[power down noise] [mellow music] There's an opportunity for everyone who's interested in mountain biking, and you can be a little bit more devoted or intense about it, and you can make all these crazy goals or you can just want the like, socialization aspect of it.

I'm a mega introvert.

Um, and so sometimes I need a little exposure therapy.

And I got to the Betties rides and I get my, get my all from the friendships that we, we all develop out there and it's just like a variety of things you can accomplish by mountain biking, [mellow music] I say this all the time where it's like mountain biking is funny because as a sport, it's hard.

It is.

It's not an easy sport.

And so I think for women with mountain biking, you're getting so much confidence and determination and pressure variance and stuff that you learn and all that stuff I've seen just kind of transfer over into other people's lives and being more confident, whether it's in their home life or at school or at work.

And you'll talk to these ladies and you can see their confidence build and they do make statements like, yeah, this is my time.

Like, I've chiseled this out for me!

Because they're getting all these amazing things out of it.

[mellow music] I think, Jane doesn't give herself enough credit.

There's such a diverse group of abilities and personalities out there that, like, the community that she's brought together is really inclusive, And so that's why I keep coming back, is because she's built a really inclusive, safe, friendly community where you can just go be yourself on a bike.

[mellow music] I say it over and over again.

I do a lot of organizing, but, it wouldnt happen without the women in this community.

There's so many women that just constantly show up.

And yes, I am leading rides, but it's the people that are in the middle of the pack in the back of the pack.

They're always offering support to women like, you can do this, you know, putting themselves out there to meet other people and helping people feel comfortable.

So, I really think that this community is going to keep this whole Betties group going for, for long time because of that.

[mellow music fades out] [upbeat show music]